It has long been recognized that it would be highly desirable in many industries and arts to provide rolling bearings provided with means for positive and reliable lubrication and in which such lubricating means are also quickly and easily replaced as necessary with a minimum loss of operating time. Many attempts to achieve such rolling bearings have been suggested previously but none has met all of the desired criteria. For example, it has been suggested previously to employ removable articles containing lubricant which are held in place in the bearing by various types of cage structures. Heretofore, such lubricating articles have either been relatively difficult to remove and replace or they have not been entirely satisfactory in providing positive and reliable lubrication. Another suggestion of the prior art has been to fill the entire void in the bearing with a lubricant, either a fluid in a sealed bearing or, more recently, a lubricant filled into the void of the bearing and gelled in situ therein to provide a self-supporting lubricant mass not requiring a seal to hold it in place. Such self-supporting gels formed in situ in the bearing are a significant advance in the art. Although they too have certain disadvantages such as the difficulty of controlling the location, extent and pressure of contact of the gel lubricant with the surfaces to be lubricated, and the tendency of some such gels to adhere to the interior of the bearing and actually hinder or prevent the operation of the bearing. Therefore, a need remains in the art for an easily replaceable lubricating insert which provides positive, precise and reliable contact with and lubrication of the desired bearing surfaces.
It is a primary object of the present invention, therefore, to provide novel lubricant inserts to rolling bearings which are easily and quickly removed and replaced as necessary and which provide positive and precisely predetermined contact with the surfaces to be lubricated so as to provide reliable lubrication thereof.
It is another object of the invention to provide novel structures for retaining lubricating inserts in a rolling bearing in precise lubricating contact with the surfaces to be lubricated.
It is still another object of the invention to provide lubricating inserts in the form of precision-shaped gel lubricating masses formed outside of the bearing structure but shaped to fit into the bearing with precise location and effective lubricating contact.